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A lot of water has passed under the bridge since the Motorola Xoom, the first official 10-inch Android tablet. By almost every stretch of the imagination, the Xoom was an awful tablet with a terrible display, poor battery life, iffy performance, and an ecosystem consisting of just three tablet apps. Today, 18 months later, we finally get a glimpse of Google’s next attempt at a 10-inch tablet: The Samsung Nexus 10.

The hands-on reviews of the Nexus 10 are in, and while it’s enjoying a more positive reception than the Xoom, it’s still very much a mixed bag. In theory, with the highest-resolution (2560×1600) mobile display in the world, the first mobile device with an Exynos 5 (Cortex-A15) processor, and 2GB of RAM, the Nexus 10 should be a monster. In practice, it would seem that Samsung and Google kind of forgot that battery tech still isn’t up to the task of powering and illuminating these monstrous Retina displays. The Cortex-A15 doesn’t exactly sip battery juice, either.

In general, the reviews all point to very mediocre, verging on poor, battery life. Engadget saw just 7 hours 26 minutes from its battery test, compared to the normal 10-11 hours that most other 10-inch tablets can muster. The rear-facing camera is bad. On the flip side, the dual, front-facing speakers sound good, and though it’s plastic, reviewers are generally pleased with the look and feel of the Nexus 10.

Even when it comes to the 10.1-inch PLS (enhanced IPS) 2560×1600 display, fault can be found. While the resolution is the highest on the market, that’s where the superlatives cease. Anandtech found the Nexus 10’s display to be middle-of-the-road in terms of brightness and contrast. Viewing angles are excellent — but at what expense? Cramming that many pixels into a tablet requires much stronger backlighting than a lower-resolution display — and as we can see from the low brightness of the Nexus 10, Samsung/Google obviously decided to skimp on the backlight, so as to maintain some semblance of all-day battery life.

Exynos 5

More important than the display, though, is the fact that the Nexus 10 is the first mobile device to play host to Samsung’s Exynos 5 Dual SoC. This is our first chance to see the performance of the ARM Cortex-A15 core — the long-awaited successor to Cortex-A9 — and ARM’s new Mali-T604 GPU.

While it’s too early to be conclusive, the first set of reviewer benchmarks suggest that the Exynos 5 isn’t going to blow your mind — at least not yet. In most tests, the dual-core CPU sits in the middle of the pack, beaten out by the iPhone 5’s A6, or the dual-core Snapdragon S4. It does seem to pull ahead of the pack in some browser benchmarks, though. For what it’s worth, reviewers all say that the Nexus 10 is very snappy — so it’s probably not worth paying too close heed to the benchmarks.

Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 GPU performance [Credit: Anandtech]

The Mali-T604 GPU (which replaces the Mali-400 found in the Exynos 4) is also a bit of a mixed bag. It definitely improves on the Mali-400 in a big way, but it still falls behind the SGX543 GPUs found in the iPhone 5 and iPad 3/4.

Software

In terms of Android 4.2 (see: Demystifying Android 4.2 Jelly Bean), most reviews say that it’s nice — but nothing special. In terms of apps, it sounds like reviewers had a much better time than with the Xoom (phew!), but that there’s still scant few tablet-specific Android apps, and even fewer that are tailored for high-resolution displays. For the most part, you’re still dealing with scaled-up apps — which Android does quite well, but there’s an awful lot of apps out there with art and icons that just aren’t ready for the 300 PPI treatment.

How fast is too fast?

The overarching tale with the Nexus 10 seems to be specs above all else. Yes, the screen has an almost inconceivable resolution — but in practice, the 1920×1200 Asus Transformer Pad Infinity will probably look better, thanks to higher brightness and contrast. Yes, there’s a brand new CPU inside, clocked at an impressive 1.7GHz, but games will still have a lower framerate than an iPad, iPhone, or some Snapdragon-powered smartphones. Is Android 4.2 only slick and responsive when backed by the Cortex-A15? No way.

Really, though, when you remember that the Nexus 10 starts at just $400, we probably shouldn’t be so picky. I just can’t help but wonder if the Nexus 10 would actually be a better tablet if the screen was slightly less preposterous and the CPU was clocked a little slower. It also pains me to think just how beautiful the new Samsung Chromebook could’ve been if it had used the 2560×1600 panel, rather than 1366×768.

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